


the general hostility and unfairness of the universe

by CakeorDeath



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CakeorDeath/pseuds/CakeorDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Where No Woman prompt: You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.</p><p>Uhura remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the general hostility and unfairness of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit welcome.

Uhura felt the eerie silence more than she heard it. She had been expecting the place to feel horrifying empty and wrong, corridors and rooms that thronged with life now symbolically quiet.

In fact she simply felt tired. Dog tired. So she dragged herself up the three flights of stairs, pausing to sigh with the kind of exhaustion that makes every step feel like a punishment every four steps or so.

It was only when Uhura finally staggered into her room and saw the few red hairs on a blue pillow that she thought of Gaila.

She was on the floor before she quite realised what had happened, sobs coming out involuntarily. It was the first time she'd cried like that in a long while. Oh she had shed tears, for Spock, and for Vulcan, and for the children's serious, bleak eyes, looking around for mother. She had cried for coming home to a safe, beautiful Earth.

But selfish tears, with sobs and snot, were a comfort she had not allowed herself.

Uhura took in the PADDs lain haphazard around the room, the open doorway showing a towel on the bathroom door. The list of heavily amended rules, written on Gaila's beautiful Orion paper, using Uhura's calligraphy set. The only thing they'd had in common, in the beginning.

Uhura remembered the first time she saw the messy, sex-obsessed green girl as an Orion. Watching the group of protestors surround her, screaming about her poisonous influence on humanity, watching her being pulled away by Starfleet officials, who were kindly but resigned. She remembered her being refused entry to the social of an academic conference on a backwards looking colony on Mars. She remembered Gaila sitting through endless lectures on Orion, where she was told, in dry, clinical detail, just how depraved her culture was.

The first time Uhura saw her as Gaila was when a visiting professor from said backwards looking Martian colony had criticised Uhura's essay on the history of translation on Earth because since she was a black African female, and was therefore likely to be biased. Gaila commented that he was published despite having the obvious bias of being an unlikable prick.

Selfish. Uhura had always seen their friendship from her point of view. Gaila hed been a frequent irritation, both a terrible roommate and someone who went against all Uhura's views about how the world. Sometimes fun, of course, but never serious, except for the disappointment she felt when she had let Uhura down with her bed-hopping ways.

She realised then, with bile encroaching her throat, she had always resented that Gaila wasn't the tortured, pitiable slave girl, who stayed covered up and agreed with Uhura's views about slaves, and cultures, and how insightful Uhura's opinions were. Gaila didn't suffer properly.

Uhura felt an urge to be destructive come over her, and she found herself looking around the room for something to throw out the window.

She could never make amends. Uhura could never tell Gaila why and how she was oppressed by Uhura as well as everyone else. This thought made her laugh, a bitter one, but a laugh all the same.

Uhura remembered that the last moment she had seen Gaila. She had been thinking about her own ship placement and how Spock was a bastard.

Life really wasn't fair.


End file.
